At night when everything had quietened down, I went up to my father.
„Father, I will not go to Ayaguz.“
„Do you want to go to Auapa in Semipalatinsk?“ my father asked me.
„No, I’ll go with my grandfather,“ I forced out of myself.
With a strange expression on his face, my father silently looked at me.
„I want to be with my grandfather,“ I repeated.
My father shifted his confused gaze to my mother and I understood that it was easier for him to organize the whole district than to deal with me.
„The Evacuation Organizing Committee will remain behind in the village. There are seven of us and we will stay here… You’ll have to go with the little ones to Ayaguz.“ He fell silent and nodded in my direction. „And what are we going to do with him?“
„If you want him to be expos to radiation, send him with his grandfather,“ mother angrily replied.
„I won’t be exposed to radiation, why should I be?“ I objected.
„Don’t repeat words you don’t understand,“ mother said in a tired voice and muttered, „The bomb won’t ask your permission.“ And then added very quietly, „Ruin has befallen us…“
Father, pretending not to have heard her last words, stared at me intently and said, „Alright. You’ll go with grandfather and grandmother. They need help anyway and you already are an adult dzhigit.“
„Hurray!“ I shouted. „Hurray!“
Mother mournfully rocked her head from side to side.
„We have been told that it is not dangerous,“ father added.
The villagers loaded up at dawn and hastily bid their farewells. Once again there was that terrifying sound of confusion and commotion – the weeping of women, of children, the roar of vehicles, the bleeting of sheep and the barking of soldiers’ commands.
My grandfather and I also set off. Behind the village gathered other old men and women, who were going to the mountains with the animals.
I saw that apart from me, there were no children. Just then I noticed the little girl Kenje sitting on the bullock cart together with her grandmother. I was overjoyed. She smiled at me and I waved back.
„When we went to war, there was no such feeling of terror,“ noted one of the old men.
„That was war, and this is the end of the world.“
„Then it means that young stranger was right? The one the police took away? And the leaflets he read out to us spoke the truth?“
That young man, dirty, ragged and thin, told us such terrifying stories that we, the village boys, shook in terror. He maintained that the end of the world was nigh, after which would come the day of the Last Judgement when each person would answer for their sins. Then he handed out the leaflets where (I remember to this day) in bold letter’s it stated:
